Department of State

President Obama should designate one lead agency for international development to avoid costly, contentious and time-consuming interagency coordination and potential duplication of activities. For the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, for example, the staffing and level of coordination needed for 5 or 6 different government agencies working on HIV in a single country is incredibly time consuming and wasteful.
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Submitted by Community Memberin Jul 2011

Voting

State Magazine is published monthly. The purpose of the magazine is “to facilitate communication between management and employees at home and abroad and to acquaint employees with developments that may affect operations or personnel”.
All Department of State employees are required to have email accounts. The publication should be “Digital” only. Paper copies are delivered to our cubicles/offices religiously each month
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Submitted by Community Memberin Jul 2011

Voting

BOTH OCR AND HR PAY CONTRACTORS FOR INVESTIGATIONS, MEDIATION AND COUNSELING WHEN THESE SERVICES CAN BE PROVIDED BY THE LOCAL EEO OFFICE FOR FREE OR FOR FEES THAT ARE FAR LESS THAN WHAT CONTRATORS CHARGE.

Submitted by Community Memberin Jul 2011

Voting

I have a hard time with the enormous amount of waist that I see every day in the Federal Government on a number of things. One of the things that bother me a great deal is that many Departments feel like it is necessary to provide a printer on most employees desks, of which a great number are color printers. I feel strongly that employees should be networked to a central printer. If this were the case there would be millions
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Submitted by Community Memberin Jul 2011

Voting

I'm not sure how everyone else does it, but at the State Department we have to book our flights through a travel system called E2, run by a company called Carlson-Wagonlit. Besides being difficult to use, this system charges ridiculous amounts for flights. I recently booked a trip from the Global Financial Service Center in Charleston, SC to Washington DC and back again. E2 price? $1400. The same flights were available
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Submitted by Community Memberin Jul 2011

Voting

currently DOS requires a complete resubmittal of electronic paperwork via E2 if the final cost vary by more than $250 or 20%. This includes items that the traveller has no control over such as airline and in-season hotel costs. This generally takes between two to four hours of the travellers time to resubmit the travel authorization and then completely fill out the NOW blank voucher and resubmit it.
Remove this wastefull
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Submitted by Community Memberin Jul 2011

Voting

The government spends an unknown amount every year on providing clearances to existing government employees who are just transferring from one to another agency (requiring the same type of clearance). Once you obtain your clearance it should be granted government wide (until expiration, or upgrade or the need to be updated). Having a TS or S clearance at one agency should be the same as having a TS or S clearance at
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Submitted by Community Memberin Jul 2011

Voting

Let's start at the TOP - with the defense budget for instance - lots of pork fat there! Then let's move on to the salaries and benefits of our Congressmen and House of Reps and don't forget the Senators - a small pay cut wouldn't hurt them in the least and it's only fair that we ALL pitch in. Next let's extend the work age to 67 or maybe even 68, instead of mandatory retirement at 65, so that we baby boomers can continue
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Voting

The Us Government uses thousands of inter- office envelopes. Once an inter-office envelope is full, it becomes useless. If we find the way to use plastic or other material where we can write in envelopes, we would just have to erase the previous destination and write the new one, that way the same envelope could be used forever. The ones we use now are only good to use 38 times or less, if they break or get wet.

Submitted by Community Memberin Jul 2011

Voting

There are numerous examples of work overlap. As an example why does the IRS and SSA conduct international negotiations when DOS is in charge of embassies and has the staffing to handle the work? By having one agency handle this type of work (for example) would bring the agencies closer together and would save a tremendous amout of operational work.